The Impossibility Theorem

Abstract

“Nothing takes place without a sufficient reason,” wrote the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz in the 18th century; “that is to say, nothing occurs for which one having sufficient knowledge might not give a reason ... why it is as it is and not otherwise.” When 19th-century physicists invoked chance in their statistical theories of matter, it cast no cloud over the principle of sufficient reason; probability is useful, but causal determinism rules the universe. So it was most surprising when in 1932, a young Hungarian mathematician announced a mathematical proof that determinism is dead.